At the end of July the BLM told ranchers using Mount Lewis that “drought triggers” had been met and cattle must be removed in seven days.
“We must remove the cattle from our summer grazing country on the mountain, where there is ample feed and adequate water, to the flat, where there is very little of either,” rancher Pete Tomera told the Elko Daily Free Press.
Bob Schweigert of Intermountain Range Consultants in Winnemucca says ranchers had to sign new grazing agreements with the BLM in May and the BLM is violating terms of those agreements.
The BLM agreed to review key monitoring locations in coordination with permittees in early June, but the scheduled joint monitoring was canceled. Instead days later a rancher came across BLM employees conducting monitoring without any ranchers present. Another monitoring outing was scheduled on short notice while permittees were away from the area, and testing again was done without ranchers present.
“They lied to us again,” rancher Eddyann Filippini told the Elko newspaper. “(Battle Mountain BLM manager Doug) Furtado can’t be trusted and we don’t trust the data they collect from the range monitoring sites when they don’t allow us to accompany them.”
...The ranchers say delays in getting cattle out on the range and what fencing they were required to do by BLM has cost them half a million dollars.
Reportedly some ranchers chose to defy the latest order to remove their cattle, contending the BLM breached the agreements made with ranchers.
A demonstration similar to one in May, dubbed the “Cowboy Express,” is scheduled in September — in which riders are to carry a petition to Washington, D.C., seeking the local BLM manager’s firing.
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